New York's Soda Ban Ineffective at Fighting Obesity

Yesterday we learned that 62,344 people signed a petition opposing New York’s proposed ban on sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces from New York City eateries, street carts, and stadiums.

To be honest, I was pretty shocked when I first heard about the proposed ban. While I certainly applaud any effort to fight this nation’s obesity epidemic, this ban goes a bit overboard.

And quite frankly, I call bullshit on any politician that supports it…

After all, if you want to instigate dietary changes that can help reduce obesity and diabetes rates, there’s a much more effective way to go about it — a way that doesn’t turn the government into some kind of dictatorial health-food Nazi.

Here’s the thing: If you decide to do so, you can legally buy an enormous soda at a fast food restaurant, movie theatre, or convenience store. And when I say enormous, I mean ridiculously enormous…

7-Eleven offers a 64 oz. “Double Gulp” to its customers. My friends, 64 ounces of soda will provide you with 744 calories worth of sugar!

And in the Midwest, the Kum & Go convenience store will happily sell you a 100-ounce soda.

Now, if you choose to down 100 ounces of soda and get more than half of your daily caloric intake from sugar, that’s your right. I mean, you’re an idiot, but there’s no law against that — nor should there be.

If you’re a lawmaker looking for ways to fight rapidly escalating obesity and diabetes rates in an effort to drastically lower the health care burden that continues to fall on taxpayers, outlawing mammoth sugary drinks is unlikely to be very effective.

There’s a much deeper problem here than folks just wanting to quench their thirst with high-fructose corn syrup and sugar.

We need to step back and hone in on the root cause of America’s soaring obesity and diabetes rates. Because it’s not access to 100-ounce travel mugs.

As author Michael Pollan pointed out in his book In Defense of Food, the rise in obesity in America began around 1980, when an avalanche of cheap calories began to flow from American farms prompted by the Nixon-ea changes in agricultural policy. Pollan goes on to say:

American farmers produced 600 more calories per person per day in 2000 than they did in 1980. But some calories got cheaper than others: Since 1980, the price of sweeteners and added fats (most of them derived, respectively, from subsidized corn and subsidized soybeans), dropped 20 percent, while the price of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent. It is the cheaper and less healthful of these two kinds of calories on which Americans have been gorging.

These are precisely the kinds of calories found in convenience food — snacks, microwavable entrees, soft drinks, and packaged food of all kind — which happens to be the source of most of the 300 or so extra calories Americans have added to their daily diet since 1980.

Bottom line: Cheap food results in folks eating a lot more of it.

But it’s not really cheap. Sure, that soda may not cost you more than a couple of bucks at the convenience store, but through your tax dollars, you’re also paying to prop up the corn producers that allow that soda to be sold at a price that does not represent the true cost to produce it.

You also get to shell out a few bucks to cover those uninsured folks who don’t pay their bills after going to the hospital to be treated for diseases resulting from obesity.

If any of these lawmakers really want to step up and propose the kind of legislation that would result in a decrease in obesity and diabetes rates, they would be wise to start with the farm bill — gutting the free ride for Big Ag and enabling a real free market to dictate the price we pay for food.

I’m quite certain if we ended all those fat subsidies today, the price of those gigantic sodas would soar…

Folks would be a bit more likely to wash down their snacks with some tap water. It was good enough for generations of folks before us — most of whom were not obese or diabetic — and it’ll be good enough for us, too.

New York’s Soda Ban Ineffective at Fighting Obesity originally appeared in Green Chip Stocks. Green Chip Review is a free 2x-per-week newsletter, is the first advisory to focus exclusively on investments in alternative and renewable energies.

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